


Not For Heaven, Nor Yet For Hell

by KittyGalaxy



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: DB Brian is sad but he is loved damnit, Heavily implied unethical science, Hurt/Comfort, I'll edit these tags as I go, Little bit of morality switch thots for yall, M/M, Multi, Polymechs - Freeform, The central focus is me overthinking our dearest Drumbot and writing about it, There will be more instances of polymechs in future chapters, This is post Carmilla yeetening but she's there in a flashback, This will be a multichapter fic eventually, might dive deeper into that in a future chapter, please bear with me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 10:02:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29823267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyGalaxy/pseuds/KittyGalaxy
Summary: Considerations by the Drumbot on several aspects of his being.
Relationships: Drumbot Brian/Gunpowder Tim (The Mechanisms), Drumbot Brian/Jonny d'Ville, Drumbot Brian/Jonny d'Ville/Gunpowder Tim, The Aurora & Drumbot Brian (The Mechanisms), The Mechanisms Ensemble/The Mechanisms Ensemble
Kudos: 19





	Not For Heaven, Nor Yet For Hell

**Author's Note:**

> I have way too many thoughts and feelings about Drumbot Brian, and also the rest of the Mechs lets be real here,,,,
> 
> As stated in the tags there will be multiple chapters eventually, I'm quite busy though so I can't say with certainty when this will be, please bear with me!

Drumbot Brian sat in his pilot seat. An everyday occurrence for the metal man. The Aurora didn't actually need a pilot, sentient and intelligent as she was. However, everyone needed to do something to pull their weight, and so Brian had ended up as the pilot. Sitting there though, with essentially nothing to do, gave one a lot of time to be alone with one's thoughts. For Brian, this was a curse more often than it was a blessing. 

He tried his best to keep his thoughts focused on more positive things. Such as his partners' latest triumphs and escapades on whatever planet they'd last landed on, or how he got to cook large dinners for all of them on occasion. However, sometimes, one cannot help but linger on thoughts and memories of a more negative nature. For Brian, today, staring out into the vast expanse of star-speckled space, was such a day. He didn't quite know why, but for some reason, if he stared out into space for too long, he got sad and melancholic. His mind strayed to when he first woke up on this ship.

***

His eyes opened. He felt… wrong, somehow. Everything was more numb. Had he been drugged? He tried to sit up but found that he was tied down by strappings of some sort. He felt really sluggish. His eyes didn't want to stay open, he was exhausted, like he'd ran a mile without pause. He forced himself to stay awake though, and tried to look around the room as best he could. 

From the small glimpses he could manage, he saw tools and machines all over the place. If he had to guess, the place appeared to be a lab of some sort. The room didn't seem to have any windows. He had absolutely no clue where he was. Great. The lighting was dim as well, the room only lit by the neon green of an emergency exit sign. Whoever had put him here wasn't currently in the room, and it seemed they hadn't expected him to wake up yet. 

He closed his eyes again, and tried to remember how he could've possibly ended up in a situation like this. To his shock and horror however, he couldn't remember anything. Not just of the previous time he was awake, but anything at all. Like he had lived no life before this. He didn't even remember his own name. His eyes shot back open and he started to hyperventilate. He needed to get out of here. He struggled and fought against his binds but they just wouldn't give. He wanted to scream, but didn't want to get found by someone who might mean him harm. He wanted to cry, but no tears would come.

It was at that moment the door opened and the lights were turned on, blinding him for a brief moment. He caught glimpses of a person walking to the tables and cabinets with the many tools he had spotted earlier. They seemed to be a lady, but he couldn't quite tell. Then they turned towards him, and stopped.

"Well, well, well, I didn't think you'd wake up so soon." The mystery person said, "I still needed to run some tests to see if everything was functioning correctly, but I suppose if you're awake you can help me in answering those questions. Tell me, does your voice work?"

His mind was flooded with questions, panic still surging through his veins. He strained to turn his head towards them, wanting to at least get a good look at the stranger. He hadn't tried to speak yet, so he figured now was as good a time as any to give it a shot.

"W-who are you? And what do you mean 'see if everything functions'? What did you do to me?" He knew he was probably being rude, but he really didn't care right now. For all he knew this person was going to chop him to pieces and leave him to rot out in the… Out wherever he was.

"Looks like your voice box is working fine, good, that will make things a whole lot easier, and less painful for the both of us." They spoke up again, seemingly ignoring his questions. He didn't like the smile they were giving him. "Also, my name is Doctor Carmilla, me and my crew found you floating out in the depths of space in a small pod, near a dying star."

He took a moment to process that. How in bloody hell had he ended up there? He tried to reach for his memories again. Anything at all. He came up empty. Also, what did this Carmilla person mean by 'voice box'? That's a weird way to refer to a person's vocal chords, right? Apparently his silence was taken as compliance and Carmilla continued explaining.

"When we found you, you were quite dead, you know? Only your heart was still beating faintly. Everything else was beyond saving, but I took your heart and crafted you a new body. I'm quite proud of it, you see, it's my biggest mechanising project so far."

Carmilla said something more about how the previous biggest mechanising "project" had been mechanising a girl's veins. He tuned that out, however, in favour of focusing on the apparent fact that he had been dead. And his heart was all that was left of his original body. Was he a robot now? He didn't even know where to start with unpacking all of that, his mind racing at 100 miles per hour. Carmilla didn't seem to notice his inner turmoil, however, as she gave him even more mind blowing information to chew on.

"With this new body you don't need to worry about death anymore, you're immortal now." He made a noise at that revelation and she paused, finally giving him some actual time to breathe and to process.

He was immortal now? That's... that's ridiculous. It's impossible! ...But if he was mostly metal now --- which would explain why everything felt more numb --- was it really such a stretch to believe he couldn't die? 

"I-I can't die…?" He asked, his mind hazy with disbelief, and his new metal tongue somehow thick with shock. Carmilla nodded at him before speaking up again.

"Well, I suppose, technically, if someone shot you, say, in the head, you'd still die. However, your mechanism, which is nearly your entire body, would repair the damages, and you'd get right back up!"

He let that sink in, turning his head to look at the ceiling again. He was immortal now. He could die, but it wouldn't stick, he'd just get back up. Still, even with a metal body, dying probably still sucked. Not that he remembered the first time he had apparently done so. 

At some point, Carmilla broke his train of thought, getting back to all the tests she still wanted to run. She tested if he could still feel things, which he could, but it was like touching things through a thick blanket. She recalibrated his mechanical nerves. It hurt like hell.

These kinds of tests continued on for hours. Most hurt. Some, thankfully, didn't. By the time she was done, he was aching all over. He thought it wasn't fair that a mechanical body should be able to feel pain. When he voiced that thought, she told him she had simply tried to recreate a human body as best as possible. So he guessed he was stuck like this. A metal man who could still feel everything a body of flesh and blood could. Fantastic.

Eventually, she broached the topic of his memories. He told her he didn't have any memories at all, and cursed himself for the way his voice broke when the words left his mouth. He didn't want to show this lady any more weaknesses than he already had. She asked him if he could remember his name. He shook his head. She told him that she was going to tell the people who were to be his "new family" that he had woken up, so that they could all meet him, and to think of a new name for himself in the meantime. 

With that, he was left on his own again. He thought about some of the other things that she had told him. That apparently, everyone on this ship---his new family---was in her band. They called themselves Carmilla and the Mechanisms, because Carmilla had found each and every one of them dead or dying and mechanised them in one way or another. He supposed that meant all of them were immortal. Well, at least he wouldn't be lonely. 

He thought of a name for what seemed like a long time. By the time Carmilla came back to get him, he settled on the name Brian. And he followed her out of the lab to meet his new immortal family.

***

When Brian came back to himself from his reminiscing he wanted nothing more than to be on his own for a while. He set the Aurora to autopilot and went to leave. Jonny was also on the bridge, but if he noticed Brian briskly walking out of the room, he didn't comment on it. After all, it wasn't uncommon for Brian to leave his post to go do something else for a bit. Everyone knew Aurora could fly herself just fine.

He didn't run into anyone else on the way to his room, which he counted as a small blessing. He didn't know if he could deal with anyone asking questions right now. He just needed to be alone for a bit, that was all. He was fine.

When he reached his room and stepped inside, he asked Aurora to lock his door. She obliged, but a screen descended from the ceiling, asking if he was okay.

"Yeah, I'm okay, I think. Just, uhm, just need some time on my own, I should be fine in a bit." He tried to sound reassuring, but he wasn't sure he sounded all that convincing. Still, Aurora gave a few words of reassurance before her screen retracted back into the ceiling. He collapsed onto his bed and started shaking slightly. He shook in the way one does when they cry, except the tears never came. For all the physical accuracy she had strived for, the Doc hadn't given him tear ducts to cry with.

*** 

Brian wasn't sure how long he'd been lying there, quietly shaking. He thought he had even briefly fallen asleep at one point, but now, he was disturbed by a loud knocking on his door.

"Open up, Drumbot! I know you're in there!" Came Jonny's voice from the other side. He really didn't want to deal with the first mate right now. He loved the man, he really did, but Jonny had about as much tact as a raging typhoon.

"Piss off, Jonny, I'm not in the mood for being around people right now." He knew he was being an asshole. He'd just apologise for it later. Jonny knew he didn't mean to be rude anyways, not really. He heard Jonny swear and mutter something that sounded a lot like 'insubordinate piece of brass' before his footsteps could be heard retreating down the hallway.

Before Jonny had interrupted, he had been in the middle of overthinking his morality switch again, and his brain seemed eager to get back to it. When he had first found out about his literal, physical morality switch, it had felt like a hard punch in the gut. He had actually gotten truly mad at the Doc for the first time over it. Yelling how it was unethical, how she couldn't just decide something like that for him while he had been laying dead or unconscious in her lab. 

Her wrath had been excruciating to bear.

She hadn't removed the morality switch in the end, and so, he had been forced to learn to live with it. It had taken him many, many years to get used to it. Even now, he still struggled with it. He preferred to be on Means Justify the End but then he was a boring goody-two-shoes who couldn't do so much as lie, let alone murder. However, if he was on End Justifies the Means, he ended up hating himself for the atrocities he committed in the name of keeping his family, his partners, as safe and happy as possible once he flipped back to MJE. He hated that with the simple flick of a switch everything he stood for, everything he thought he was, could be flipped on its head. 

He still couldn't remember anything about his past before getting mechanised, but he wondered if the person he had been would look upon him now with horror. Or worse, disgust. Had he been a good person before? Did his morality switch mean he was only a bad person half of the time? Probably not, considering he usually flipped the switch himself when asked. They were all criminals though, wanted across every star system. Why should he, out of all of the Mechs, be stuck with questions about his own morality? He wished he could just stop caring. Maybe someday he'd set himself to EJM and break the knob off. ….But what if that eventually stopped him from loving, too? He loved all of his partners so much, he didn't want to give that up. Even if that meant he would remain in this morally ambiguous hell for the rest of eternity.

***

He laid there for a while longer, no longer feeling the need to cry. Just feeling numb deep down to his core. He found himself in this state more often than he'd like to admit. Then again, he had the rest of eternity to get his shit together, so sue him if he spent some days depressed in his bed.

Once again there was a knock on his door. He wondered how long he had been in here, if this was the second time someone had come looking for him. He asked Aurora how much time had passed. Apparently it had been several days. That would explain the concern, he supposed. He could faintly hear multiple voices whispering outside his door, but couldn't quite make out what they were saying. It sounded like Jonny and Tim though.

"Hey, Brian, it's been a little while, you doing okay in there?" Came Tim's voice from the other side, confirming he was, in fact, one of the people standing outside. He sounded worried. Brian hated worrying the others. He was fine. Right? Oh, who was he even trying to fool, none of them were fine. What the fuck does "being fine" even mean when you're an immortal criminal?

He didn't move from his spot, facing away from the door, but asked Aurora to open it for them. Both Tim and the one he presumed to be Jonny entered the room as soon as the door opened. One of them turned on the lights and it was only then that Brian realised he'd been lying here in darkness this whole time.

"Christ, you look like a fucking mess." Yup, Jonny was definitely the other person here. His remark was quickly followed by an 'oof!', as he was presumably elbowed in the ribs by Tim, or something along that line. Brian half heartedly flipped him off, which was then quickly followed by another 'oof!' noise from Jonny, after which he gave a grumbled apology.

Before Brian knew it, Tim and Jonny were climbing into his bed and cuddling him from both sides. It was relatively rare for Jonny to show affection this openly, so he didn't comment on it, knowing the shorter man would just get defensive about it. Instead, he wrapped his arms around him, and pulled him in close. Behind him, Tim wrapped his arms around Brian's waist, effectively spooning him.

"Bad few days, love?" Tim murmured softly into the back of his neck. Brian nodded slightly.

"Yeah. It happens. I'll be okay eventually, though I appreciate the affection." He said with a smile. Being affectionate with any of his partners always lifted his spirits. Especially if it was Jonny who he was getting affection from, since he often got too embarrassed to give it so freely and without hesitation. As expected there was a grumble from the first mate after he had said that.

"Don't mention it. Seriously, don't, or I'll shoot ya." The threat lacked its usual heat or bite, so Brian settled for kissing him on the forehead. Jonny let out a small flustered huff at that, but cuddled closer anyway, much to the amusement of both Tim and Brian. 

Brian wasn't okay, but lying here between two of his partners, knowing the rest of his family on this ship, and the ship herself, also loved and cared about him, he felt that maybe, someday, he would be. He dozed off with a smile on his face that night.

**Author's Note:**

> I love these space pirates so much yall,,,,,
> 
> I plan to add at least 3 more chapters to this, all will be centered around our dearest Drumbot. ^-^


End file.
